iPod nano speaker patent could be for a camera

Have you ever noticed how nearly every smartphone’s camera makes a digitized shutter sound when you snap a picture? Have you also noticed that it’s often difficult or impossible to figure out a way to turn the setting off? This is because there are laws in some parts of the world that require the shutter sound to help sway voyeuristic photography. For that reason, a patent filing by Apple for a basic speaker in the iPod nano and iPod shuffle may be pointing to a camera in future models of the media player.

The filing shows the addition of a speaker into the attachment clip of the portable media players. This would all center around having a recessed area within that clip. This recessed area would be large enough to house an acoustical member, which would be shaped in a way that allows for some rudimentary sound output. The size of the region could lead to a certain frequency, and additional holes or other features could further guide the sound that is produced.

It’s an innovative way to build a primitive speaker, but the resulting sound wouldn’t likely be anywhere near advanced enough to play music. If it did manage to play some tunes, it might sound something like the feeble attempts of old 8-bit NES games to simulate voices. In other words, prepare yourself for something along the lines of robot static that is almost discernible as a song.

The only reason I can fathom that Apple would consider adding such a crappy speaker would be to make shutter sounds. It’s long been rumored that the tiny iPods will someday be getting camera capabilities, and previous leaks have shown prototype casings that have a hole for a camera. The images provided for this patent filing appear to have that same hole:

So it looks like, at some point, the addition of a camera in the iPod nano and iPod shuffle was on the table. Apple would have needed the devices to provide basic camera click sounds in order to sell them in Korea and Japan. So perhaps this lightweight and cheap method of producing sound was one way to do that.

Of course just because Apple filed a patent for something hardly means it will ever see the light of day. The company’s designers and engineers spawn thousands of ideas, and only a handful make it into final products. So while a camera speaker has probably been considered, this patent doesn’t necessarily mean anything beyond that.